MÉS per Palma has proposed this Monday to limit the price of commercial rents in the city's stressed areas to protect local businesses and curb the replacement of traditional businesses by franchises and establishments exclusively oriented towards tourism. The proposal has been presented at the former Donya Àngela haberdashery, one of Palma's historic businesses, which the party has symbolically turned into a real estate agency to denounce how speculation is transforming the city and expelling both residents and traditional businesses. According to MÉS, the problem is not a lack of customers, but the continuous increase in commercial rents. "Many businesses don't close because the business isn't working. They close because, when the contract ends, the new rent is simply unaffordable," explained MÉS per Palma candidate David Pujol.The group warns that this process is causing an homogenization of Palma's commercial landscape. Neighborhood businesses are disappearing and are being replaced by franchises, large chains, or establishments geared towards tourist consumption, which impoverishes the identity of the neighborhoods and reduces the services intended for the resident population. For this reason, MÉS proposes to promote specific regulation of commercial rents in the most tense areas, with the aim of avoiding disproportionate price increases, facilitating the continuity of local businesses and preserving the commercial diversity of the city. "When speculation enters through the door, neighborhood commerce leaves through the window," summarized Pujol.The spokesperson for MÉS per Palma, Neus Truyol, recalled that the disappearance of traditional commerce is a direct consequence of the same model that expels residents from neighborhoods. MÉS also recalled that the General Plan promoted during the last term incorporated tools to preserve the commercial balance of the neighborhoods and limit the concentration of tourist uses, but that the Popular Party abandoned that model.For the ecosovereignist party, protecting local trade is a city policy comparable to housing regulation. "If we regulate residential rents so that people can continue living in their neighborhoods, we must also protect the businesses that make daily life possible. Without local trade, neighborhoods lose their identity and cease to be neighborhoods," concluded Pujol.

"We no longer know what else we can do: banners, resist, demonstrations... But if you take one step further, like graffiti, they expose you in the media and come looking for you at your home; I don't know what else we can do." The indignation belongs to Margalida Castell, manager of the Quart Creixent bookstore, following the arrest of two young women for graffiti against tourist overcrowding in Santa Maria. Faced with this situation, the bookstore has reinforced the distribution of SOS Residents banners, which have almost run out after the Civil Guard's intervention.

Guillem Barceló has just opened Patxanga, a shop that complements his screen printing workshop opened a few years ago, where he sells his own designs based on iconic Mallorcan phrases transformed into drawings and colors. T-shirts, lunch boxes, and bottles are the beginning of a creative universe now installed in the old Ca na Verda premises.

The Eroski cooperative concluded the thirteenth edition of its 'MeasureSmiles' solidarity campaign in Palma with a symbolic donation of €3,500 to each of the 14 participating organizations. In total, the initiative raised €49,000 through the sale of the traditional illustrated calendar-rulers in supermarkets across the Balearic Islands, this year under the slogan 'Thank you for making solidarity measurable... in happiness'.

Fina Olivas is still going strong. At 68, she's the fourth generation to keep Can Candu alive, one of Menorca's oldest and most iconic businesses, along with Ca na Genera (Ferreries) and Ca n'Hernando (Ciutadella). Nearly 140 years later, it's surviving the onslaught of e-commerce. Her husband is ill at home, but every morning and evening, Fina heads to number 38 on the central Ramal street in Alaior to sell sheets, towels, and underwear to a loyal and large clientele. "And not just from Alaior. People from Mercadal and Migjorn Gran also come here to shop," she says. She laments that the recent traffic changes implemented by the City Council have reduced traffic in the town center, making it more difficult for customers from out of town to reach the shop and park nearby. "If they find the streets closed, it won't make things easy for me, because I'm barely scraping by with just the people from Alaior who come on foot."

On April 1, Vicente Cajuso, 73, lowered the barrier for the last time at Didasko, the stationery store he owned in an industrial estate in Maó. After having long considered the possibility of retiring due to his age and at a time when the business was increasing profits and revenue, he did so. While still considering it, he posted an advertisement on entrepreneurship websites and public administration programs to see if any Menorcans would take it, but he had no choice but to transfer the business to a Mallorcan company. "If I could have entrusted the stationery store to a Menorcan, I would have done it," he asserts. He also would have liked his children to continue with the "hard work" he did for 38 years, "as long as they liked the trade and it made them happy," he emphasizes with the sincerity of a father who wants the best for his children.

What behaviors make a good Mallorcan? This question is answered in a video posted on the Instagram account. @lapalmesanadesigns where he talks about up to five behaviors and actions that define what they consider "a good Mallorcan."

Sunday, Plaza de Sa Pobla. It's seven in the morning and Maria Serra Miquel, a 61-year-old woman from Murcia, has been up for almost two hours. With her husband, she's already set up the stall with a generous array of tomatoes, radishes, onions, leeks, chard, lettuce, eggplant, beans, melons... She's surrounded by about fifteen other pleasures. She's one of the oldest. She's secured a shady spot to spend the morning. "I," she says, "just want to retire. I've been saying it for three years, but customers keep asking me to hang on a little longer. Pleasure is very cruel, especially in summer and winter, when you have to suffer through the hot, cold, and rainy days."

Toni Gomila (Manacor, 1973) has always been an actor. Vocational, if we want to dress it up; vital, if we do, terrifying. In any case, her presence and name have long been enough to attract spectators to the theater. Now the association that brings together small businesses in Mallorca, Pimeco, has chosen her again to unite culture and local economy.

Mallorcan merchants have raised the alarm and are asking for aid to revitalize the sector during a sales period that is "much weaker than usual." During the memories of human pressure and ofarrival of touristsRetail sales continue to fall, and they are looking for solutions to encourage younger consumers to start shopping.

The Mallorcan small and medium-sized business association, Pimeco, has launched the 'Mallorca's Shops Love Tourists' campaign to send a "clear, direct, and sincere" message: local businesses value and need tourism.